Bill Maher Agrees 'Thug' Is the New 'N-Word'

Comedian Bill Maher agrees that “thug” is the new “N-word.”

On his HBO show Real Time on Friday, Maher said Seattle Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman made “a great point … that thug is now the ‘N-word.'”

“I think it’s a very creative way to point out that racism has really kind of gone underground in this country,” Maher said. The comedian then said he believed that whenever whites “see a black guy they don’t like: thug.”

“Because it’s socially unacceptable now–unlike when it once was–to say the ‘N-word,'” he said. “So that’s sort of the word that they use instead.”

“The only reason it bothers me is because it seems like it’s the accepted way of calling somebody the N-word nowadays,” Sherman said in a press conference on Wednesday, as Breitbart Sports reported. “There was a hockey game where they didn’t even play hockey, they just threw the puck aside and started fighting. I saw that, and said, ‘Oh man, I’m the thug? What’s going on here?'”

On Friday, TNT analyst and NBA Hall of Famer Charles Barkley took it a step further and said “street cred,” in addition to “thug,” was a “racial slur” that was equivalent to the “N-word.”

“Some people don’t have the courage to say the ‘N-word’ so they use terms like ‘thug’ and ‘street cred,'” Barkely said. “But that’s what they really mean.”

Messrs. Maher, Barkley, and Sherman have come under criticism for their comparisons because “thug” is a word that has also been used to describe white union bosses and autocrats and dictators like Russia’a Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s Kim Jong-un.